Skype development history

Skype was written by European programmers, namely – Estonians Ahti Hem la, Prut Kasesalu and Jaan Tallinn. These names might sound as a surprise, because last years we heard other people named as authors: Dane Janus Friis and Swede Niklas Zennstrom. The point is that both are correct. May be the three Estonian names were sounded no only surprisingly for someone, but also a bit familiar. That's because these guys developed a famous back in 2000s P2P file exchange service KaZaA which allowed them to win some fame. The work over Skype IT-journalists wrongly give credits for to mr. Friis and mr. Zennstrom was done after that.

Since its startup in 2003 Skype never stopped improving. Every new version featured many new options and convenient tricks. There is not much sense to list all those auto-responders, online numbers, conferences, SMS sending and other functions. Instead, we would like to underscore the other thing – the company developed steadily despite Friis and Zennstrom sold their brainchild in 2007 to eBay for a round sum of several billion bucks. By that time Skype already have won enormous popularity (74,7 millions of accounts and about 10,8 users online).

 The decision didn't hurt Skype at all, as we can see from the following facts and numbers:

• At present, there are about 560 million of Skype accounts;
• There are Skype version for almost all available platforms, including mobile ones;
• The company delivers all range of VoIP services;
• Skype crates and sells various gadgets, starting form garnitures to full-function Skypephones – phones working both with usual mobile and Skype nets.